Mr. Allison is clear about his basic principles. He understands that economic success can only come about in a nation of free people who benefit or suffer from their own decisions. He understands that production engaged in by free individuals, not consumption, will improve economic conditions and he understands that re-distribution brings little in the way of economic stimulus. Please note: All blogs on this account are copyrighted in the year of their publication by Robert Villegas, Jr.

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Tuesday, January 24, 2012

So, if none of our leaders will provide the truth about the President’s speech in Kansas, someone else will have to do it.

Yet, the President is correct. The issue of capitalism versus regulation is the defining issue of our time and we must resolve this issue once and for all. The debate, in essence, is about morality and politics because it involves basic questions about man’s nature and the purpose of government. I have written about this extensively in other blog posts.

The discussion, in this blog post, is about the proper role of government about which the President’s speech also pretended to be. The basic questions include: Should government have the authority to use force against citizens in order to advance goals that are contrary to the citizens? What should happen when the actions of government conflict with the needs of human survival? Does the government have the authority to coerce people who are not criminals? What should be the role of individual rights in framing the government?

And more specifically: Does the President have a respect for the rule of law? Does he understand that the government was created to protect individual rights and that there is no authority in the Constitution (and in reality) that gives one man the power to dictate to others how they will act, which products they will choose and what they will do with the money they have earned through their own work? What is the moral justification for expropriating the money of citizens and spending it on projects and programs that the Constitution does not authorize? How can the morality of altruism be practiced by a government prohibited from violating freedoms?

At every turn, it seems the President has an answer. But it is an answer that hangs in the ether without foundation and justification. He thinks it is perfectly within his realm of authority to act as the sole judge of these issues because the election gave him that authority. But it did not. His campaign proclamation to bring forth “change” does not invalidate the Constitution. His intent to engage in unilateral action violates the rules of Republican government. For a man who is supposedly a Constitutional scholar, his actions represent a strange twist on the concept of Presidential power. We did not elect him to make his own laws. We elected him to be the President of the United States, not the dictator of the United States. There are constraints on his power which he cannot violate.

The President thinks that in order to govern, he need only declare an “emergency” and then act unilaterally. This is one of the worst arguments for Presidential Power ever to land in the White House. Forget that this approach is an invitation to “create” the emergencies that supposedly require direct action. Forget that he is inventing emergencies virtually at will. Forget that his policies violate the principles of separation of powers and check and balances. Forget that individual rights have gone virtually out the window. What baffles most people is that the President thinks he is the only person who understands the causes of our problems (self-interest) and that the only solution is altruism and re-distribution. One could not write a serious analysis of the President’s theory of Presidential power; one could only write a comedy.

Yet, this is a deadly serious issue. The President has subordinated our very survival to the absolute necessity of his election in November. Consider what this means for your life: You will have to endure this low economy, possibly lose or never get a job, possibly lose your home if you haven’t already lost it, possibly endure runaway inflation and higher taxes, just so we can have President Obama as our leader for the next four years. Look within your soul and ask yourself whether you will be able to survive the next four years of the Obama administration?

Capitalism means survival for our citizens and our nation. The President denigrates capitalism as if the act of trying to survive is somehow immoral. Capitalism allows for the free flow of capital and investment into better ideas that make better lives. The President calls capitalists “those at the top” and he demands that more taxes be paid by the rich while he ignores the simple fact that the rich do not have enough money to pay for the massive over-spending he has done. And, when the results of the President’s policies are manifest, the President asks for more sacrifice, not just from the rich, but from the very people he claims to be helping: the middle class. The squeeze is on and we are the lemons.

Yet, the real tax on the middle class is not found on a tax return. It is the tax of inflation which will come down hardest on the aged and the poor. This tax is accomplished by printing fiat money to pay for the massive debt the President continues to build. New printed money added to the economy dilutes the value of existing money and this creates inflation. When that inflation in the form of higher and higher prices (called runaway inflation) hits and people notice they don’t have enough money to survive, many will not know that it is the President who did this to them.

So the talk of raising taxes on the rich, because it would do nothing to eliminate the deficit, is nothing more than rhetoric. The President is using the “bash the rich” class warfare mantra, not to expose an evil player on the scene, the rich, but to hide the real evil player, himself. The President would drag the nation down rather than build it up. He would rather create conflict and discord among Americans in order to set the stage for the system of government that creates poverty.

To further understand this, I’d like to quote another speech by the President, the speech he gave on the night he was elected in 2008:

“It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.”

There’s that “defining moment” line again, or should I say, this speech is the genesis of that defining moment that he later talked about in his Kansas speech. Since we're talking about "defining" moments, why didn't the President “define” “change” when it would have helped the voters decide?

But some of us have figured it out. His actions have shown us what change means and we say, ‘No, thank you, Mr. President.” We've figured out that the defining moment the President hoped for is the moment when the American people decide to make sacrifice the motivating principle of their society; the moment when they decide to loot the wealth of those who made prosperity possible; the moment when we become a society of cannibals. That is the change he has brought to America.

Many of us have also figured out that, in practice, the President’s “change” meant full-blown fascism; the massive looting of society by the government. I’ve written about our country’s movement toward fascism and I’ve defined the term while few others have. Fascism is the worst, ugliest system to come out of the last century. It holds that the government can make people do whatever it wants while leaving to them the responsibility for the failures of its policies. It means spending taxpayer money to bailout corporations and their unions. It means spending taxpayer money to fund the creation of new industries regardless of whether the people want those industries. It means printing money which steals peoples’ savings and creates the hidden tax of inflation. It means massive government debt imposed upon people without their consent. It means using taxpayer money to fund organizations that the government favors but which the people do not. It means putting the competitors of friends out of business through regulations and picking winners and losers. Fascism is runaway government. This is the change the President promised and his actions prove it.

We must ask ourselves a very important question: Why did fascist Germany lose the war in Europe? This question is important to us because almost all the things the President is doing today were done by the German fascists before him. The German people lost that war because they had been worn down by their own government. They were educated constantly on the vibrant future that would come about through their sacrifice for the Volk. They were promised a 1,000 year Reich and a brilliant future of world power and affluence. As time went on, the toil of the entire society, by means of aggressive war, became necessary so they could win “living space” for Germany. This goal required unceasing work and commitment from every member of society. It meant that they had to "donate" their money, time, effort and minds to a collective goal defined by the government. Germany's "defining moment" came when they voted Hitler into power; when they declared that they would be a society of sacrifice for the collective.

Eventually, these people began to see the sinister nature of fascism; the regimentation, the slave labor, the blood and the death it created. Those that did not know the evil going on, at the very least, began to suspect that the speeches of Hitler were intended to steal from them their life blood and their children for the sake of the biggest sacrifice in history, not only their own self-sacrifice but the sacrifice of entire nations and whole peoples all over the world. The inflationary policies of the government that built huge highways, powerful armies and massive government buildings were not seen as victories by the people but as the cause of rising prices and increasing misery. Before Germany was defeated by the allies, the spirit of the people had collapsed from within due to the demanding policies of the government. The end result is that Hitler blamed the German people for not being good enough for the future he promised.

Fascism always collapses because eventually it requires total sacrifice and this makes life impossible. The lies lead to failures and more lies; the failures lead to more taxes. More taxes lead to reduced standards of living and eventually to slave labor and collapse. We are not there yet, but we are on the tipping point. Once high taxes on the rich destroy future investment, and once inflation causes a collapse of the currency, poverty will have reached a level so low that society will collapse. The destruction of America will be complete and the hordes of plundering Armies from other countries will have their way. Will someone be able to look back and see that the genesis of our destruction was that we allowed altruism and sacrifice to plunder us before the Armies descended? Only the victors write the history books and you can be assured of a long dark age of misery if we don’t recognize now that the defining issue of our time is capitalism and freedom versus fascism and slavery.

How do the President and his fellow travelers respond to the charge of fascism? They laugh and tell us that anyone who would think such a thing is ignorant and worthy of ridicule. Do they define the type of government they stand for? No, they refuse to discuss ideology because they hold ideology to be an outdated way of defending their plans for society. They evade the discussion of principles in order to evade telling people the truth about what they are doing. As plunderers and thieves, they must tell people that everything is normal, as it was, and that they are just asking for a little bit of sacrifice. They use a “we versus them” approach that denigrates anyone who would disagree with them, dropping intellectual debate to the level of the street fighter, the public opinion poll and the man with the gun. They hope that people ignore the deeper philosophical issues that they must confront if they are to save themselves. Cheap character assassination and cheaper criticisms of capitalism are their stock in trade. Rumor-mongering and scandal-mongering are their political weapons. They masquerade as objective critics doing their best to understand the “facts” but they base their criticisms on an unacknowledged Marxist ideology which they pretend is scientifically proven and beyond question.

Yet, their true political ideology, the reason that the President did not define what “change” meant during his election campaign, is fascism. Their pragmatism requires that they masquerade as good people who must defend us against the “bad” people out for a profit. Just as the Nazi’s vilified the industrious Jews and other capitalists as the enemies of society, today’s fascists in the administration are vilifying business executives and rich people as the enemies of society.

Remember, that altruism, sacrifice, is a characteristic of fascism. Remember, that it has caused our economic collapse…and now consider…that the President plans on winning the next election by appealing to the very philosophical principle that is dragging our nation into the ditch…altruism. If he can get you to compromise and agree with him that we need more “giving”, he has won the debate and the rest is merely a matter of implementation via force. He wants you to blame yourself for not sacrificing enough and he wants you to vote for him because he’s the altruistic leader “fixing” America (with your dollars taken from you by force).

Yet, the guilty secret that the President refuses to acknowledge is the fact that re-distribution and altruism actually make things worse for all Americans. It is a flight of fancy to think taking from some Americans and giving to others will actually do any good. Re-distribution does not create new wealth; it steals wealth from producers and gives it to people who will merely consume it. This creates a net decline in the economy regardless of how efficient the technocrats are in re-distributing it. Eventually, the people from whom the money was taken will realize that their work yields them a poor result so they slow their effort and reduce their savings.

The flaw in the President’s system is that there will never be an end to the call for sacrifice. In spite of declining economic conditions caused by too much sacrifice, the President will call for more sacrifice. That the people are impoverished, that they are starving, poorly clothed and in poor living conditions is never blamed on the government. The government is good it is thought. It is only trying to help the poor they tell us. Yet, when people sacrifice their total production to the goals of the government, they have nothing to eat, to wear, to enjoy. We are getting there and when we reach the bottom level of misery, we’ll be told that our misery is the result of our greed and self-interest and that we have not sacrificed enough. It is an old story.

When we have eaten the productive citizens alive, we must find new scapegoats to eat, the greedy ones that have been “stealing” from the people who have nothing to steal. When we’ve destroyed the last factory, looted the last grocery store in the name of “the people”, then we’ll have reached the dead end. Some might remember hearing that “the best sacrifice is total sacrifice” and they’ll wonder why this idea didn’t make things better. Weren’t they trying to do the right thing? And some few might vaguely remember the words of the President about a defining moment when we “changed” into the “right” kind of society and we’ll wonder what happened. When we remember that someone “told you so” and warned you what was coming, you’ll vaguely remember that these people were bad. At this point, it is time to start eating shoe leather if you can find it.

Leaders such as President Obama, as did the leaders of Nazi Germany, are perennially waiting for their failed policies to someday succeed. They put off far into the future, the affluence of the coming great society they claim to be building. Today, we are told, it will happen after the election and we must stay the course.

We started this series of blog posts by recognizing our need to have honest leaders who are willing to admit the truth. But when the leaders are lying to the people; when their policies are creating rather than solving the problems of the nation, a free people has only one option; and that is to vote out the people who refuse to be honest with them.

Fascism is the worst possible system for mankind. Because it is constantly manipulating the people and their institutions, a fascist government is always on a collision course with reality. Today, one regulation is proposed to fix a problem caused by yesterday’s regulation. Tomorrow a new regulation will fix the problems created by today’s regulation and so on until there are more umpires than players, more policemen than citizens, more regulators than regulated, more dead than living.

In the past, many Americans realized that fascism was so bad they were willing to die in battle to defeat it. Today, we are being counseled by our leaders to accept it without even being told that it is fascism. We must face the fact that these leaders have accepted corruption as “practical” and they think the best way forward is to turn every man into a dependent waiting for the next handout taken from the honest work of a few slaves. This is the system they want and this is the system they tell your children is moral.

It should have been no surprise that the Nazis would eventually descend into the gutter. The murders of millions and the concentration camps are only some of the atrocities possible to a government which does not recognize individual rights. We must understand that our government, by not recognizing the right of people to their own production, by arbitrarily raising taxes, printing money, creating massive budgets, practicing crony capitalism and engaging in government corruption is on a collision course with reality as well.

No one can "regulate" prosperity into existence. No one can manipulate a people into responding positively to coercion. No one can lie themselves into power and expect that no one will know the truth. Sooner or later, someone will mumble under his breath the complaint that the leaders are bumbling idiots.

Yet, the brutal truth is that one can’t use force and “hope” for anything. One does not use force against disarmed citizens in the hope that things will get better. In order to be willing to use force against other men, a man must first hate those other men. In order to invoke policies that destroy people, one must want to destroy those people. This is not something that a person can do in ignorance. This is true of the man who gives the order, the politician who votes for it and the stormtrooper who enforces it with his bayonet. No one gets to the point of murdering innocent people without first deciding to murder someone.

The truth about the President’s economic policy is that it is a policy of deliberate destruction. The sooner we put a stop to this madness, the sooner we will be able to restore our liberties and begin living again.

There is only one way to plant the seed of prosperity in a people and that is to leave them free and protect them in their freedom. Let them think for themselves, express their own true thoughts, work according to the truth and let them trade without restriction and you will build the basis of a great society. When we recognize this again, it will be the true defining moment for a great society.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

So, if none of our leaders will provide the truth about the President’s speech in Kansas, someone else will have to do it.

The collectivists in our universities who taught the President and his friends will tell you that the intellectual enemies of mankind are the ideas of reason and freedom. They will tell you that our economic salvation can be found only in collective joining by all members of society; that the able should sacrifice to lift up the group.

They may not tell you this outright. They may actually tell you that they value reason and freedom, but their definitions of these concepts are convoluted and distorted compared to the views of the Founders. They will hold out a promise of a better tomorrow while you, the average American, know, perhaps subconsciously, that a better tomorrow, on these terms, can only come if you work hard while others do nothing. You, the producer, are being vilified as the cause of the nation’s problems while those who do not work hard are being called the victims of your drive for profit. You’ll know that the decks are stacked against you, the rules are designed to punish you and, in spite of your being punished, you are supposed to accept the “justice” that represents your enslavement. As you watch while your freedom and prosperity are slipping away, you are supposed to believe that nothing has changed, that collectivism really works and that the able sacrificing to the unable is a desirable moral ideal.

Our politicians and university professors tell us that capitalism is the problem and we need to replace it with a system that fosters sacrifice for the collective; otherwise known as social justice. Is capitalism the problem? Does capitalism really mean that each person is left to fend for himself? Yes, and that is what makes it possible for capitalism to foster the creation of incredibly efficient products and services that immeasurably improve the lives of people. That principle means that you can live in security, affluence and enduring economic abundance.

Capitalism, as we’ve discussed, is a system that fosters cooperation. People use their minds to decide which products they will purchase and which they will offer for sale. As long as each individual is free to make his own rational judgments he can constantly improve his life. On the other hand, the financial crisis was caused by the requirement that bank managers drop their rational judgment and not evaluate prospective mortgage applications on their merits. Capitalism would have required that they make a rational evaluation of each loan, identify the borrower’s ability to pay and make a decision based upon the expectation that the bank would make money on the loan. This process would not have allowed the banking crisis; it would have prevented the banking crisis.

Does capitalism countenance people to play by their own rules? What does the President mean when he accuses people of playing by their own rules? The President uses the term in order to falsely equate production with theft and it results in the restriction of production and the liberation of theft. The destruction of society comes when you force people to do what government wants rather than what they want. To let people play by their own rules is to liberate them to use rational means to accomplish their survival. It is this that the President and his friends destroyed in 1994 with the strengthened CRA rules. The real prejudice was not that aimed at the poor or black or brown; it was the prejudice aimed at bank managers who were unfairly called racist bigots because they were making loans according to rational standards.

How does an honest businessman, playing by his own rules, enable his customers to survive? He does so by means of correctly ascertaining reality and developing viable products that improve their lives. This is not dog-eat-dog but human cooperation and trade. This is not playing by your own irrational rules but playing according to reality and the requirements of survival. It is survival that capitalism makes possible, not cheating, not thieving and not lying.

By characterizing capitalism as evil, the President creates for himself a powerful political weapon. By means of this prejudice against capitalism and banks, he can take advantage of envious hatred to loot banks of their capital. But there is one idea that makes anti-capitalism powerful and successful as a political tool. This tool is altruism. It would not be possible to vilify capitalism were it not for the pervasive influence in society of altruism. Were it not for the moral dominance of the idea of sacrifice, there would be no argument that could be used to gain coercive power in a free society.

The President knows that whenever someone advocates free markets all he has to do is point out that unchecked capitalism would take money from the poor and put it in the hands of ruthless profit-chasers. Whenever Tea Party protesters complain about massive spending by the President, all he has to do is tell us about our duty to help the poor and especially those exploited by Big Business. Whenever people demand that the spending stop all he has to do is accuse them of wanting to hurt the poor and take away services that help them survive in a world where jobs are lacking.

The truth is that the President's economic policy is nothing but song and dance that touts the value of sacrifice as a means to picking peoples' pockets. The idea that the poor need homes; that they need the “American Dream” at the expense of people who have worked hard and saved their money is a travesty and a lie. Only those people who diligently work, diligently save their money and who have the ability to pay their loans should be allowed to own homes. Only by applying a rational standard can banks make money.

Yet, the Republicans are incapable of defending capitalism and of proving that self-interest is the best, most productive, most moral idea today. They seldom point out that capitalism has created virtually all of the good in our society; that capitalism is, in fact, good. Instead, they cringe whenever someone accuses them of being in the pay of capitalists and of seeking only to advance greedy interests. They are afraid to stand up and argue that capitalism is the most moral economic system in history because it gives people the power to make rational choices and take moral actions that benefit their lives. Republicans are afraid to say that the most moral way to have an affluent society is to leave people alone.

In fact, Republicans agree with the Democrats that force is necessary to make capitalism “work”. They propose huge government programs to prove to the voters that they too believe the lie that government can do great things for people, denying to the public that they are contradicting themselves. To appeal to the voters, they pull out the “populist” message of Teddy Roosevelt, promising a “trust buster” attitude to make greedy businesspeople pay for their crimes, hoping that people will think the Republicans are principled fighters for the people against greedy acquisition.

In advocating regulations, in vilifying businesspeople, in promising to punish trusts, Republicans are helping the progressives establish the terms of economic debate. By refusing to take a moral stand for capitalism and for the right of people to make a living without interference, they make profits impossible and punish people for hard work and innovation. All they have to do is open their eyes to see the proof of the morality of capitalism. All they have to do is notice the hotels, limousines and airplanes that they get around in, visit the restaurants and factories and the teeming cities with tall buildings to get a sense of what it means to be free. Like the proverbial busy-body who never stops to smell the roses, the Republicans never stop to notice that freedom creates abundance and moral living.

And because of this, they are helpless in the face of the President's morality of sacrifice and re-distribution. They are just as much responsible for the mess we are in.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

So, if none of our leaders will provide the truth about the President’s speech in Kansas, someone else will have to do it.

In his speech, the President avers:

“But, Osawatomie, this is not just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what's at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement. Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that's happened, after the worst economic crisis, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same policies that stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for way too many years. And their philosophy is simple: We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.”

What does the President mean when he says that some “want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess”? He should be referring to the practices of socialism since it was re-distribution of bank mortgages that caused the crisis. But the President is actually referring to the practices of capitalism and the people who want to return to it are the Tea Party people and some Republicans. The President and his Occupy friends are blaming capitalism for the crisis and hoping that you buy into the lie. To be sure, they don’t want you to think very deeply about the causes of the crisis.

The President holds that the “practices” of capitalism involve making money at any cost, by any means and through any deception possible. Certainly, then, these practices must have caused our financial crisis – not those of his best friends. Yet, this view is not new. It is one of the most long-running non-sequiturs in the history of economics. It is caused by using a false moral evaluation as the foundation for a “factual” conclusion.

The question of what caused our economic collapse is one for science, not morality. An astute analyst would ask about the specific actions men made that caused a specific economic result. Only by identifying the individual players and the specific actions they took can we can arrive at an identification of the specific moral premises that caused the economic result. Moral premises, when practiced politically, can have economic consequences but it is important to understand the facts first. The President's approach starts with the premise that men will always do wrong if they are left free to act. And since capitalism leaves people free to act, then the causes of a specific bad economic result must always be capitalism. This approach obfuscates the actors, the actions and the philosophies that actually caused the collapse. It is another example of thinking in non-essentials.

The result of this thought process is deception on the part of the President. His view of capitalism is wrong and this leads to a distorted opinion about the causes of the collapse. In fact, because of his own moral premises, he is the one individual still engaging in the kinds of "practices" that got us into the mess. For instance, I don’t see the Tea Party people asking for more sacrifice of the taxpayer’s money for the sake of those people harmed by the financial collapse. I see the President asking for more sacrifice. I don’t see the Tea Party people asking that people whose loans are being foreclosed be allowed to stay in their homes. I see the President demanding this. I don’t see the Tea Party people asking for loan extensions or other forms of re-financing of unpaid mortgages. I see the President creating programs to affect this. I don’t see the Tea Party people asking for bailouts of banks and AIG and Goldman Sachs and General Motors. I see the President bailing them out.

So who wants to return to the practices that got us into the mess? The answer is quite simply, the President.

By now, you should see that the President, in framing the debate as a sort of gang warfare, is hoping his words can create the reality he desires. The result is that everything he says winds up being true in reverse and takes on the nature of a lie. When he looks for villains, he does not look at his own gang, he looks at those who would stop his gang. When making an economic analysis, he does not identify the facts; he consults his own pre-conceived moral evaluation of capitalism. Only thinking in non-essentials will enable this form of thinking in reverse.

Yet, most of us know that wishes don’t make it so and the negative economic numbers don’t support the argument that the President has the solution to our economic mess. Those who make an actual effort to understand reality know that the President is the destroyer of the middle class and that the “practices” which caused the collapse were those of the President and his friends. The actual “greed” responsible for the collapse was that of people who schemed to steal the taxpayer’s money by means of collectivist and class warfare policies.

Yet, he is right that this is the defining issue of our time. This is a make or break moment for all of us, not just those of us in the middle class. Most of us know that the best way to “raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure (our) retirement” is for America to move back to Constitutional liberties and capitalism. That isn’t collective amnesia; that’s recognizing the fact that only freedom can create the kind of prosperity necessary for the middle class to exist. Unfortunately, for the President, reality will not bend to his wishes.

The real debate that has raged for the last 200 plus years, has been between collectivist philosophies that bind man in slavery and the philosophy of the Enlightenment that declared man a free sovereign individual. In fact, this is the debate started by John Locke and the Founding Fathers. They analyzed the various forms of society and concluded that a new idea could settle the debate: a limited government that defends individual rights. The Founders knew it; the Tea Party members know it; the President and his looting friends are still having the debate as they muddle along in non-essentials about balance and fairness and making sure that no one can fend for themselves.

The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression was caused by the policies the President espouses, the idea of “re-distribution”. The critical, massive mistake; the most egregious thing that the President said in this speech is that Tea Party members and many other pro-capitalists believe “we are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.” This statement shows an utter lack of understanding of what capitalism is and it justifies the fear of many in the Tea Party movement that the President is a Marxist who sees capitalism as evil.

The truth is that we are better off “to fend for ourselves and play by our own rules”; but it is important to understand what it means to advocate freedom against tyranny and dictatatorship. The President is criticizing freedom; a concept that most credible historians have identified as the very concept that has created our prosperity. Indeed, if one believes that freedom is wrong, then one can only seek to control men and ensure that freedom of action is curtailed. The President has joined forces with King George and taken us back to an economic policy of sacrifice and enslavement.

The Founders and many Americans would never have described freedom using those words: “to fend for themselves”. These are the words a collectivist would use to criticize freedom and capitalism. It is more of the same terminology that the President used when he talked about fairness and balance. It is based upon a hatred of the “voluntary cooperation” that Rand used when describing capitalism. A collectivist would call freedom “fending for ourselves” because he wants to ensure that you view freedom as a negative, predatory concept.

Collectivists don’t want you to discover that freedom means freedom of the mind. They don’t want you to recognize the “voluntary cooperation” that is characteristic of capitalism. They don’t want you to see yourself as “an island” responsible for your own economic results; rather they want you to view yourself as helpless without someone else’s sacrifice; helpless to think, to live, to love and to enjoy life.

Collectivists think they have a better idea; the pursuit of togetherness and commonality and sacrifice, a society that will drag us screaming and kicking into the coercive imposition of altruism - with smiles and lies to make us think we are doing it voluntarily. Collectivist dogma proclaims it a crime to be proud, to stand alone; to think with your own mind and to judge based upon your values and standards. A collectivist President would attempt to be the moral authority for all people. He would cast an evil eye toward anyone acting independently. He would use non-essentials to pass judgment upon those who “play by their own rules” and he would ensure that the scales are tipped in favor of those who can’t fend for themselves. Who pays for the tipping of the scale? Those who can fend for themselves.

But we can’t lose sight of the full reality. Collectivism has two symbolic hands: The first is the hand held out asking for your help, reminding you with a smile that you have an obligation to help others, that we should work together to make a better world, while the other hand is picking your pocket. That's what you get for thinking collectivism is a good idea in theory.